The Slasher Cycle Theory

Today some deep thoughts on slasher cinema from that deep thinkin’ pumpkinhead, Jeff Carter, author of Criterion from Crossroad Press and keeper of the Compendium Of Monsters.

Hallowe’en greetings, Ed-Heads.

I like to watch and review an entire horror franchise every October (see previous posts here and here). While every franchise has its ups and downs, nothing could prepare me for the mind shattering downward spiral of the Howling sequels. To spare you that suffering, I’ve pulled back for a wider look at the franchises in general.

In film school we were taught about Christian Metz’s ‘Genre Cycle Theory’. He wrote that each film genre begins in the Experimental Stage, evolves into the Classic Stage, devolves into the Parody Stage and ends in its Deconstruction Stage. With luck, the genre is reborn and the cycle continues.

You can see these rhythms play out across all forms of cinema. Without the masterful deconstruction of the Western genre in Clint Eastwood’s ‘Unforgiven’, we would never have received Paul Hogan’s ‘Lightning Jack’.

In my analysis of the great horror franchises, however, I have discovered strange mutations undreamt of by any stuffy French film critic. I give you Jeff C. Carter’s ‘Slasher Cycle Theory’.

These are more than just common tropes. They are essential rites of passage, and every great horror franchise must eventually pass through some or all of them:

The Original

Hilarity Ensues

3D!!!

Die Monster Die

Missing Monster

Magic!

Spaaaaaaace

Return to Roots

Das Preboot

Hilarity Ensues – while this sounds like Metz’s ‘Parody Stage’, these are not outright parodies like the Wayans brothers’ ‘Scary Movie’ series. This is when humor is injected into the horror, for better or worse.

Examples: Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4, Friday the 13^th Part 6, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Child’s Play 4, Howling 3, Phantasm 2.

This doesn’t even scratch the surface of Howling 3: The Marsupials

3D!!! – For a genre that must constantly innovate, the gimmick of jumping off the screen is irresistible.

Examples: Nightmare on Elm Street Part 6, Friday the 13^th Part 3, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 7.

Get ready to dodge Dream Demons.

Die, Monster, Die – Slashers are notoriously hard to kill, but sometimes a tired franchise needs the promise of a ‘final chapter’ to get its viewers back.

Examples:  Nightmare on Elm Street Part 6, Friday the 13^th Part 4, Halloween H20

Fairly convincing….

Magic! – Sometimes the monsters are human, and sometimes there is a supernatural evil at work. During the Magic! stage, however, we get into some Harry Potter sh*t. I’m talking spells, dream demons and magic swords.

Examples: Nightmare on Elm Street Part 6, Friday the 13^th Part 6, 7, 9, Halloween 5 & 6, Howling 2

When being a werewolf is the least interesting thing about you…

Missing Monster – Probably the strangest mutation is when sequels lack their own main character.

Examples:  Friday the 13^th Part 5, Halloween 3, Hellraiser 8

Doesn’t count.

Spaaaaace – In these movies, no one can hear you scream.

Examples: Jason X (Friday the 13^th Part 10), Hellraiser 4, Leprechaun 4

Houston, we have a problem.

Return to Roots – With luck a franchise will shake off the gimmicks and return to its roots. Unlike the ‘Classic Stage’, which codifies the core elements, this is a hard won perspective about what audiences love about the series. Next to the originals, these are often the only scary movies in the franchise.

Examples: Nightmare on Elm Street Part 7,Halloween 7,Child’s Play 6, Phantasm 5

You can’t keep a Good Guy down.

Das Preboot – The unhallowed graves of infamous monsters are rarely left undisturbed. More often than not they are desecrated, updated and demystified with lousy prequels and reboots.

Examples: Nightmare on Elm Street 9, Friday the 13^th Part 12, Halloween 9, Howling 4, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 5.

How can the ‘Slasher Cycle Theory’ help you? Let the growing pains of our favorite franchises inspire you. The next time you’re feeling stale, try some magic, or take a trip to space. If that doesn’t help you return to your roots, perhaps you can go Back 2 Tha Hood.

DT Moviehouse Review: The Cabin In The Woods

Time once more for my blog feature, DT Moviehouse Reviews, in which I make my way alphabetically through my 200+ DVD/Blu-Ray collection (you can see the list right here) and decide if each one was worth the money. Today, and a perfect fit for the Halloween season, I review Drew Goddard and Josh Whedon’s The Cabin In The Woods.

Directed by Drew Goddard

Screenplay by Drew Goddard and Josh Whedon

Tagline: You think you know the story.

What It’s About:

College students Dana (Kristen Connolly), Holden (Jesse Williams), Marty (Franz Kranz), Jules (Anna Hutchinson), and Curt (Chris Hemsworth) depart for a secluded weekend at a remote forest cabin and ‘accidentally’ summon up an undead clan of pain worshipping murderers who begin to stalk and kill them one at a time. But is all as it seems, or are they being manipulated for some mindbending, sinister purpose by office managers Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford)?

Why I Bought It:

After a premature run-in (in a dark room no less) with the head twisting scene in The Exorcist when I was six or seven years old, I actively avoided watching horror movies for about nine years, finally breaking the ‘fast’ with, ironically enough, Exorcist III.

I’m really lucky that Exorcist III was such a great flick, or I never would have backtracked and sought out all the scary movies I’d missed.

And I never would have ‘got’ The Cabin In The Woods.

I never actually realized what a horror hound I had become until I saw this.

This is probably one of the greatest horror movies ever made, period. It’s so enjoyable it almost seems like every single horror movie that has gone before was created specifically so this could come into being.

Make no mistake, to fully appreciate the greatness of this movie you have to have at least a passing familiarity with Hellraiser, The Shining, Dracula, An American Werewolf In London, The Mummy, HP Lovecraft, It, The Ring, Suspiria, Evil Dead, Halloween, Juh On, David Cronenberg, George Romero, Scream, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Troll, Poltergeist, Alien, and Friday The 13^th.

This is really a movie that benefits in a huge way from going in entirely blind. What a hard movie to cut a trailer for! Being kind of jaded about the summer slasher movie genre, the very title The Cabin In The Woods was a turnoff for me. I’m not into the torture porn genre made popular by stuff like Hostel and Saw and assumed this was going to be more of the same. It looked like yet another vanilla cookie cutter teens in peril flick. There would be some topless scenes, some beer drinking and pot smoking, and in the end, the smartest guy (or more likely, girl) would go through hell at the hands or claws of some inbred hillbilly stereotype or a zombie or plague crazy gutmuncher and maybe get away in the end, maybe not.

Then a couple people whose opinion I trusted started sounding off that this was great, but wisely (and I thank them) refused to give details as to what was so great about it.

Just watch it, they said.

So after a long time of not thinking about it, I finally rented it.

Little did I know that Cabin In The Woods would contain just about every clichéd trope in my aforementioned laundry list….and yet still somehow manage to be entirely original. Thrillingly, awesomely original, and more, a hilarious, subversive in-joke directed solely at horror fans.

This is not to say that you have to be a horror junkie with an all-encompassing knowledge of everything the genre has to offer. It’s just that it offers so much more if you’re a nerd.

Surface-wise, the plot alone is entertaining and the tag line says it all. Going into it, you think you know what’s going to happen. The very title evokes a paint by numbers scenario. Early on though, you realize something weird is going on, when the movie opens not with the teens gearing up for their weekend, but a couple of middle-aged salarymen in suits preparing for some big to-do at their white, sterile workplace.

Of course, then we get the obligatory scenes where get to know who’s who and who’s with who, which is the jock, which the brain, which the burnout. Yet there’s still something just a little off. Our football hero has in-depth knowledge of socio-economic theory. Our stoner and his wild conspiracy theories make more and more sense as the movie progresses. The boy’s aren’t slavering pussy hounds – when one discovers a two-way mirror looking into the object of his desire’s room and she starts to undress, we don’t get the voyeuristic topless scene. He knocks on the wall and lets her know what’s going on (does she do the same for him later on?).

As we go deeper down the rabbit hole of Cabin In The Woods, our expectations start unraveling. A bird hits an invisible force field. The office guys are shown to be having some effect on the behavior of the kids. There are tantalizing hints toward some greater purpose being fulfilled. And when the kids start acting like we expect them to, it’s unexpected.

W.T.F! Yeah, Cabin In The Woods is kinda like this.

By the time a character we thought was dead returns, we know this same drama is being enacted all over the world for some strange reason and I doubt anybody who hasn’t seen this movie or read about it beforehand can guess what the heck is happening. Yet it’s not all some fly-by-night-pull-it-out-of-your-ass-make-it-up-as-you-go-along thing. By the time Sigourney Weaver shows up to explain it all, it’s like the last piece of a puzzle is fitting into place and you think to yourself, “Ahhhh that’s perfect.”

It’s a real treat to be surprised by a movie, and it’s even better to be totally delighted by it as a genre fan.

For me, the movie really takes off when they go down into that cellar and find it packed to the gills with thinly disguised items from other movies. The puzzle ‘ball,’ referencing both Hellraiser and perhaps Phantasm. The diary with the incantations right out of Evil Dead. It’s all intercut with that wonderful whiteboard the office workers are all betting over, crammed with achingly great references to threats from across the horror spectrum. When that scene passes and you realize what’s about to happen, you love it, but a small part of you thinks in the back of your head, “Aw man, it would’ve been so great if they’d gone with the BLANK instead.”

And then, maybe twenty or thirty minutes later, they hit the Purge button and it’s Christmas morning, as every monster and beast, every ghost and murderer on that board floods your screen.

Cabin In The Woods that does the impossible. It’s a flick with a one off plot twist so great you can’t possibly expect it to be rewatchable once you know it’s coming. But you do watch it again. And you rewind and pause and slow mo it to death to see all those white board monsters tear their way through the complex. Geez there’s even a 50 foot woman in one of those cages.

One of the most supremely satisfying movies I’ve ever seen.

And, like the complexity of the plot itself, it’s smart. You can still delve a level deeper beyond the monsters and uncover a rich examination of the movie fan himself. There’s a great scene when Hemsworth and Hutchinson are being manipulated via hormone gasses, temperature, and lighting to have sex in the woods, and the team of manipulators are shown hanging on the scene from their viewing room, waiting for Hutchinson to show her breasts and groaning when she initially defers. How many guys have sat together watching a horror movie at home or in a theater and experienced the same audience reaction? It’s a funny scene, and yet the makers bring it back a step when Hadley and Sitterson dismiss the greater portion of the crew and put their full resources toward getting Hutchinson to disrobe, ostensibly for the viewing pleasure of the Old One (is the band of randy office drones a stand in for the moviegoing audience, which is funny, or is it the Old One, which suggests something more unseemly). Their expressions completely change. They’re almost sad to do it. But the Old One must be appeased. The tropes of the ritual must be adhered to.

When Marty says early on that the world needs to crumble, but everybody’s afraid to let it crumble, he speaks of the loss of privacy, the invasion of nebulous government watchers and dropping of sanctions on private life. This foreshadows the situation of the kids in the cabin, but doesn’t it also reflect on the fears of modern life in America?

What is the change Mary is calling for if we apply it to ourselves? Should the Old One rise up to completely tear down the system? Is popular entertainment an opiate used to keep that giant from waking up and breaking out? Maybe this is ham-handed political commentary to some, but then again how many of the general movie going audience came away with this message from something as innocuous seeming as a summer horror movie?

It also cleverly breaks the horror movie cliché down into a thematic, seemingly ancient codification. The athlete, the fool, the whore, the virgin. These are mystical concepts that really do occur throughout the history of human storytelling, and are most clearly represented in the cards of the Waite Tarot. The fool is often considered the stand-in for the questioner in a card divination. In Arthurian literature it’s the fool, often Sir Dagonet (as in Tennyson), Percivale (Perfect Fool) or in some cases (TH White) Merlin, who can look beyond the confines of his own story to comment on the greater meaning. The fool sees the strings, and can follow them to the storyteller. The fool attains the Grail, the greater, hidden knowledge, often to his detriment, as is the case with Marty here.

One wonders what cultural tropes the Old Ones in Japan need to see to keep them sleeping.

A thing I’ve said this in other reviews, but a good movie is entertaining. A great movie ‘moves’ the watcher, either moving their heart to experience some emotion, or moving the mind into a previously unconsidered mode of thought.

I would say The Cabin In The Wood is a great movie.

Best Dialogue/Line:

Marty’s weirdly funny and cryptic (and ultimately prophetic):

Cops will never pull over a man with a huge bong in his car. Why? They fear this man. They know he sees further than they and he will bind them with ancient logics.

Best Scene:

Without a doubt the best scene is the monster Purge I’ve already described above. This flick has a lot of funny moments amid all the horror. Mordecai on speakerphone comes to mind.

But if I had to pick a scene that never fails to make me laugh because it’s totally indicative of the multilevel enjoyment I get out of this movie, is when Hemsworth’s Curt tries to escape the area by jumping the gorge on his motorbike.

After their camper is blocked from escaping through the tunnel by an unexpected explosion which results in a cave-in, Curt devises a plan to jump the gorge and escape on his motorbike, vowing to return with the police, the national guard, the ghost of Steve McQueen the LA Raiders, and ten thousand Roman gladiators to get his friends out, and especially to avenge the horrifying death and post mortem beheading of his girlfriend.

He assures them he can easily make the jump, and cuts a heroic, Thor-like figure for a moment, revving his bike and nodding to them his assurance.

“You can’t hold back,” his friend Holden warns him. He has to achieve maximum velocity to make this leap to freedom.

“I never do,” Curt growls.

He cuts loose, leaps the bike into the air, and it looks like he’s going to make it, until he smashes head on into the invisible honeycomb field enclosing the area. His bike explodes in a fiery ball and we sees his lifeless body tumble down the long length of the shield wall, bouncing as it goes, giving us a glimpse as to how deep it really goes (perhaps it’s there to keep the Old One penned in?).

For the victims in the story, it’s a horrible, hope-smashing moment.

For the guys in the control center, it’s a sigh inducing close call, which if you think of the movie in the terms that they are actually the ones trying to preserve the world and all human life on it, is kind of a time bomb cut the blue wire hero moment for them.

And for me, I just burst out laughing. Is it a guilty laugh? Maybe upon multiple viewings, but the first time, no. I just found the failure of Curt’s heroics unintentionally hilarious, like a somebody calling their shot in a game and then fumbling utterly, or Jack Burton exuberantly shooting in his gun in the air before the big fight in Big Trouble In Little China and then getting knocked out by the falling plaster.

I wonder if this made the Old One chuckle in his bed too?

Next In The Queue: The Call Of Cthulhu

Jeff On Jason: The Top Ten Friday The 13th Movies

Hey all, turning the blog over today to my friend and sometime collaborator Jeff Carter (his story of submersible terror, The Wager, appeared beside my own Tell Tom Tildrum in Tales From The Bell Club, and we’re working on an RPG together for Heroic Journey Publishing), whose blog, The Monster Compendium, can be found on my sidebar. Check it out – it’s a trove of obscure stuff from around the world, general geekery, and of course, all things Carterian.

Jeff, like me, is a horror movie fan, and he hosts our annual Black-O-Ween celebration, in which we view one or two African American themed horror movies from the golden age of blaxploitation (past showings include Blacula, Blackenstein, Sugar Hill, JD’s Revenge, The Thing With Two Heads, and most recently, Abby and The Beast Must Die).

For the past couple weeks he’s been viewing the Friday The 13th film series, which holds a dear place in my heart as the novelization of Part VI: Jason Lives by Simon Hawke is one of the first books I ever read that made me want to write.

As an end result, he’s put them in order of enjoyment.

Happy Friday the 12th.

————–

Howdy!

Ed’s posted a lot of movie reviews here, as well as his  annual Halloween list of must-see horror.  I thought I’d toss my hockey  mask into the ring with a list of the top ten Friday the 13th movies.

Not many movies get eleven and a half installments and a remake.  Few  characters can take that kind of punishment, but Friday the 13th has  Jason Voorhees, an unstoppable killing machine with an endless hatred of teenaged hijinks.  Having a lead character that wears a mask and  disposable casts of unknowns helps too.

So let’s take a look at the first ten, leaving out Freddy VS. Jason and the 2009 remake.

I reached these rankings through a complicated algorithm that tabulated  kills, scares, the ratio of serious to goofy, amount of Jason or other  core elements, cameos, and continuity.  And no, I will not show my work.

So here they are, from worst to best:

10) Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning

This movie has a lot of detractors, but the algorithm nearly spat this out for one fatal flaw:  Jason is not in the movie!

Just a guy

9) Friday the 13th Part 7: New Blood

This was a powerfully close tie for last place.  The story: A psychic  girl  accidentally uses one of her 9 million powers to resurrect Jason from the bottom of Camp Crystal Lake.  Most of the kills occur off screen, a  strange choice for a slasher flick.  In the movie’s defense, the MPAA  apparently cut it to ribbons before its theatrical release and then slashed it even more viciously for home video.  That being said, the end result is boring and inane.

8) Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan

This movie was almost hallucinatory with its surreal, incoherent jumbled plot. Psychic visions, drug addled gangs of rapists, nuclear waste.  The Crystal Lake High graduating class take a cruise ship to New  York…from Crystal Lake? Via Canada?  I don’t understand the geography, but distances clearly don’t matter in this film.  Jason teleports,  TELEPORTS, more than once.

Why take public transportation when you can teleport?

Perhaps this can all be explained by a certain shift: Marijuana has been  replaced with cocaine as the drug of choice.  Don’t miss the cameo by a young Kelly Hu, who is tempted to snort up with the line “the night  time is the right time”.

7) Jason X

Many would say that this half sci-fi/half farce cyborg flick is the worst of the series, but  clearly the rankings say otherwise.  Yes, the movie was goofy and cheesy and cheap, but unless you were kidnapped and brought to a sneak  preview, you must have known all that going in.

The movie was set  in the distant future to avoid any continuity conflict with Freddy VS.  Jason, which was being developed at the time.  So let’s talk about  continuity – in my algorithm, continuity not only addresses the  preservation of the established timeline, facts, and use of core  elements, but also the broader scope of the Friday the 13th events and  their impact on the wider world.

In this future world Jason is still infamous.  Scientists and soldiers both want his body for his  amazing regenerative properties and black market collectors will pay top dollar for such a gruesome piece of history.

The movie is campy  and self aware, and I really liked it.  I must confess that I had  thought it would be higher in the rankings than the extremely silly self parody of Part 6, but the algorithm does not lie.

Look for the cameo by Director David Cronenberg and a fun performance from genre veteran Peter Mensah.

The highlight is a clever gambit by the space students to distract Jason: a holodeck simulation of Camp Crystal Lake, complete with vapid,  indestructible teenagers.

Jason is going to work out some issues.

6)  Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives

This was a relaunch after the supposed ‘Final Chapter’ Part 4 and the  failure of Part 5.  This was also a parody, an inevitable stage in the  cycle of any genre.

The ‘kid who would be Jason’, Tommy Jarvis  from Pt. 4, digs up Jason’s grave to destroy his remains.  Jason is brought back to life by  lightning.

Jason has now transformed from tough, super strong mutant to indestructible  super zombie.  A magic ritual of sorts is also used to ‘bind’ and trap  Jason at the end, hinting at the mystical nature of Jason’s past.

I didn’t care for this one.  The forced attempts at humor undercut any  sense of horror.  I don’t need a movie to parody itself, I can mock it  just fine, thank you very much.

There is a nice nod to another long running series in the intro that I rather liked, however.

“The name’s Voorhees. Jason, Voorhees.”

5) Friday the 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter

Now we’re talking.  This movie had a lot of meat for the algorithm to chew  on: Cameos (Crispin Glover! Corey Haim!), Core elements (fighting Jason  with psychology!) and tons of kills and scares.  In the continuity  department, we see Pamela Voorhees’ tombstone and the character Rob, who is seeking revenge for his sister who got killed in Part 2.

“I’m YOU, Jason. And you are cool, so I popped my collar.”

4) Friday the 13th Part 9: Jason Goes To Hell

I know people hate this movie like O.G. Star Wars fans hate Return of the Jedi for its ewok shenanigans.  Fortunately, the algorithm is beyond  your petty emotions.  It’s all in the data.  Consider the cast: Erin  Gray (Buck Rogers!) as Mrs. Kimble nee Voorhees, Steven Williams (21  Jump Street! X-Files!) as the world’s most ruthless serial killer hunter and John D. Le May, who stars in this movie AND the Friday the 13th TV  series!

This movie has world building in spades.  It features the  Necronomicon Ex Mortis, the ACTUAL book of the dead from the Evil Dead  movies!  Jason is such a well-known terror that the FBI forms a special  task force to lure him out and destroy him with overwhelming firepower.

When they succeed (or did they?) the entire country watches TV news reports  about the incident with relief.  One local business celebrates with a  “Jason is Dead” sale and special hockey mask shaped burgers.

I could totally go for a Jason burger right now

This movie suffers from a lack of Jason – after the FBI blows up his body,  the evil energies that inhabit his body begin to leap from body to body, seeking a body with the cursed Voorhees bloodline that can either  resurrect or destroy him.  This is another stage in Jason’s life cycle,  from deformed child to hulking freak to super zombie to this, the dark  scion of a strange occult ritual.  Fortunately, Jason is in the  beginning and end of this movie, and does a lot of crazy killing in  between.

The final cameo opened the movie up, in a big way that  blew the minds of horror fans everywhere:  after Jason is destroyed by  his ancestor with a magic sword/knife/demon broadsword, Freddy Krueger’s glove bursts up from Hell to snatch the iconic hockey mask.

MIND…BLOWN.

3) Friday the 13th Part 2

Taking the bronze medal is part 2, a strong sequel to the original with an  almost perfect score on continuity and core elements.  Jason steps out  of the lake and onto the center stage, killing teenagers and preserving  his mother’s rotting head and grody sweater on an altar.

Some people put their mother on a pedestal. Some put them on an altar.

A savvy co-ed dons the crusty sweater at the end to mess with Jason’s  mind.  The only core elements missing are the machete and hockey mask – at this point Jason is rocking a sack with an eye hole in it.

The bag-heads soon switched to fat suits, but it was not until they adopted gangsta personas and renamed the group CB4 that they reached stardom.

This movie also has the original harbinger, crazy Ralph.  This colorful  local warned the teenagers in the first movie to stay away from Camp  Crystal Lake.  They didn’t listen, but crazy Ralph was so iconic that he became part of the slasher genre formula.

“It’s got a DEATH CURRRRSE!!!…and many scenic bike paths.”

2) Friday the 13th 3D

Ah, back when all movies with a part 3 were in 3D.  It was a simpler time.

This movie exploited the full potential of the third dimension more fully  than James Cameron’s AVATAR.  Seriously, if it could swing, float, jump, fly or pop out at the audience, it was comin’ atcha.  Not just spear  guns and pitchforks, either.  Yo-yos, popcorn, snakes, EVERYTHING.

Comin’ Atcha!

The tone was a little more silly, but only to pump up the cheap thrills.   There was plenty of scares and violent, creative death to go around.   Jason finally gets his hockey mask here, which is why part 3D gets the  silver medal.  The only thing missing is Jason’s mother…

1) Friday the 13th

The origin story of the most gifted, prolific and hardest working slasher  in history.  We learn who Jason was, meet his devoted mother, and learn  our way around Camp Crystal Lake.

Jason’s mother, Pamela Voorhees, is easily one of the most original and compelling characters of any  slasher film.  That wild eyed old lady in the christmas sweater with the blade?  She’s fueled by grief, maternal love and righteous fury.

“Kee Kee Kee Kee…Kah Kah Kah Kah can only truly be whispered through dentures.”

JAWS stopped night swimming. This stopped lake swimming.

This movie ends with the only image from the series as iconic as the hockey  mask: the slimy body of a freakish child erupting from depths of a  watery grave.

——

Jeff C. Carter’s most recent work in print appears in AVENIR ECLECTIA Volume 1, now available in paperback and Kindle from Amazon.  Get more Halloween stuff at his blog Compendium of Monsters and say hey on Facebookand Goodreads.